Emanuel and Axelrod - on the record
By: John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen April 24, 2009 04:05 AM EST

Two people with front-row seats in President Barack Obama’s White House — chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and senior adviser David Axelrod — sat down separately with POLITICO editors John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei and Chief White House Correspondent Mike Allen to discuss the early days of the new administration. Here are edited excerpts:

Obama as Candidate and President

Axelrod: If you look at the themes that he struck from the minute he started running for president through today, there is a very high level of consistency, and there is a sense that he is who he is. Obama’s governing is completely consistent with the way he campaigned and the themes on which he campaigned, the issues he highlighted, the vision he shared. That’s an affirming thing for people. It signifies his genuineness, which is one of the strengths that they see.

Working in the White House

Emanuel: Everybody knows they’re on the Obama team: There isn’t vice presidential vs. presidential division, there’s not a generational pull. People have internalized that this is a real moment in history. If you’re involved in public life in some way, this is a great opportunity for you, because it’s what you live for. Don’t mess it up for “I wasn’t invited to this meeting” and “How come I’m not on that?” That’s not what we’re about. The president doesn’t engender it, and we don’t allow that to happen.

See Also

Axelrod: I think President Obama is a committed, practicing nonideologue. He’s consumed by neither tactics nor ideology. He is more concerned about outcomes than he is about process and categorizations. He believes strongly that we need health care reform. He believes strongly that the federal government has a role to play in lifting the level of education in this country. He believes strongly that energy is an integral part of our economic mixture. And so if, in engaging in those, people want to call him a big-government liberal, he doesn’t care.

Obama’s Pragmatism

Emanuel: He differentiates ends vs. means unbelievably well. He says: “Here’s where I think we’ve got to get $3.5 million. Tax cuts make up X percent vs. Y percent. Does it get you the jobs?” He doesn’t get caught on the means. Republicans and others have made a mistake: He has an open hand, but it’s a very firm handshake.

Living and Working in Washington

Axelrod: Washington has its own gestalt — it’s in its own world, and so it talks to itself. An example was during the Recovery Act. There was this sense here that somehow we were losing altitude because the Republicans weren’t fully cooperative, that this was a big defeat for us. I’m looking at polls from around the country — public polls, private polls — and there was a consistency of support for him. Then I turned on cable TV, and I hear about the fact that his plan’s in trouble. So that’s when we started doing some town hall meetings. It wasn’t so much to get him out of Washington; it was to get the press corps who covers us out of Washington — to focus on the fact that, hey, there’s a whole other world out there.

Obama’s Work Habits

Emanuel: He’s done by about 6, 6:30, goes home for dinner and helps put the kids to sleep. Then he works at night in the residence. Sometimes he and I are both there on a Sunday, and he’s in the office in the afternoon. I have rarely seen him say in a meeting, “I didn’t get to that memo last night.” He has that little handwriting of his — he goes through that stuff.

Living in a Gilded Cage

Axelrod: His greatest concern was being isolated — the bubble — and that’s why he had this titanic struggle with the lawyers to keep his BlackBerry. One of his answers was to pull a sampling of 10 letters every day that people have written to him. He is religious about that: Every morning, the letters are on his desk, and he always reads them and often responds. It’s sort of a gilded cage, so he likes to break out of it.

The First 100 Days

Emanuel: I don’t want to go negative on Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but he didn’t pass an economic deal in the first 100 days. We have passed the largest Recovery Act in the history of the country. We’ve made a major change on kind of the footprint of the war in Iraq. And we’re on the doorstep of passing a budget that will allow major changes to happen.

Too Much, Too Soon?

Axelrod: One of the things that people sensed was that Washington was basically in gridlock, was unable or unwilling to take on the big problems facing the country. People respect the fact that this president is trying to take these issues on. When you look at the majority of people, there’s strong support for the initiatives, for the concept that he’s trying to take on some of the big things that have been left untended all these years. When people see the magnitude of the problems we have, they understand that we have to do big things to confront them.